Assuming I get permission to post articles from American Thinker and Western Resistance, I will be posting information on the history of Cultural Marxism and Islamism. Although others have written excellent essays on these subjects, it is good to keep our perspective fresh and alive with new ideas and new views as we prioritize our goals. The attempt to understand what is oppressing democratic ideals and values as events unfold is reason enough to proceed. Fjordman has given us much as has Bawer, Horowitz, Robert Spencer, and Daniel Pipes, from the non-Muslim perspective; Walid Shoebat, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan, and others have given us a more secular view of Islam, and the dangers of Wahhabism as it keeps coming at us in waves.

I think the danger to citizens of western democratic counties is to for us lose the sense of immediacy and urgency of the battle being waged on the world by the radical Islamists. The first article, by Linda Kimball, appeared a week ago in the American Thinker, and it gives us a brief, cogent look at Cultural Marxism, aka Multiculturalism.

As part 2 of the 2-part Series of the Western Resistance articles gives a needed connection, historically between the Cultural Marxists and Radical Islamic expansion through Jihad, I will post them out of order. I make no claim to scholarship when it comes to delving and divining out the problems facing us today. Honestly, having grown up in the 40’s and 50’s, I am almost at a loss to digest what I see. Almost, but not quite. What I am is scared s***less, if not witless at the evil arising (I almost said descending onto) in the world. But I do know one thing: evil arises from within, not from without. It does give me the will to persevere.

(note: I have The American Thinker’s permission to reprint 200 words give or take, so please go to their website to finish reading this article: American Thinker
February 15, 2007

Cultural Marxism

American Thinker

By Linda Kimball

Adrian Morgan has kindly given permission to re-print the Western Resistance series in their entirely (even gave me the html).

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FamilySecurityMatters.org All Rights Reserved

Radical Islam And The Left - Europe’s Black Red Alliance - Part 2

by Adrian Morgan

In February2002 former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher published an article entitled “Islamism is the new Bolshevism”. In this, she wrote: “Islamic extremism today, like bolshevism in the past, is an armed doctrine. It is an aggressive ideology promoted by fanatical, well-armed devotees. And, like communism, it requires an all-embracing
long-term strategy to defeat it.”

Her analogy is both prescient and historically accurate. Many early Bolsheviks made common cause with Islam. The philosopher Bertrand Russell visited Russia in 1920. A year later, his impressions were published in a book, “Theory and Practice of Bolshevism”. He wrote:
“Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of this world.”

Russell also observed: “Bolshevism combines the characteristics of the French Revolution with those of the rise of Islam.” He was naively optimistic about Bolshevism in these years before Stalin’s purges, noting also that: “Marx has taught that Communism is fatally predestined to come about; this produces a state of mind not
unlike that of the early successors of Mahommet.”

In 1844, Karl Marx had famously described religion thus: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”
Russia’s Bolshevik revolution of 1917 was made by people who revered Marx’s ideology, but Lenin did not initially oppress religious institutions. Until the 1920s the Bolsheviks actively encouraged Islam, which had received no support from the Tsarist regime, state
socialist authors David Crouch and Gerry Byrne.

Crouch wrote an article in late 2003 while his Socialist Workers Party was in the process of wooing political Islam in Britain. Byrne highlights instances of bias in the SWP member’s account, but agrees that Lenin initially approved of a Muslim Communist Party and a Muslim Military College. Sharia courts were allowed to administer cases of domestic law in parallel with secular communist courts, but were prevented from dealing with political cases, or enacting stonings.

Chechnya’s Muslims had supported the Bolsheviks, but others had fought against communism. In the regions of Central Asia, there was dissent. Here the Jadids had grown at the end of the Tsarist regime - Muslims who wished for an enlightened and modernizing cultural renewal of their faith. They initially found Bolshevism attractive as it appeared to conform to their view of Pan-Islamism, which had been promoted by Jamal
al-Din al-Afghani (1838-1897). During the 1920s the Jadids became split by the Pan-Turkic movements of Central Asia, and groups of traditionalists, known as Basmachi, rebelled against both Jadids and communists.

Under Stalin, in 1927 a policy known as khudshum was introduced, which tried to force onto Muslims the issue of women’s rights and the abolition of the Muslim veil. Many women who had thrown off their veils were subsequently massacred by Muslim traditionalists. There followed campaigns of repression whereby Islam in the Soviet
Empire was forcibly “tamed” to comply with the Stalinist ethos.

In August 1919, Syrian born thinker and supporter of Pan-Islamism, Muhammad
Rashid Rida (1865-1935) had written: “The Muslims wish for the success of the socialists in eliminating the enslavement of the peoples (all of whom are workers), while they reject such of their p ractices - and the practices of everyone else - that violate Islamic
law.” The Egyptian Mufti of that time, Muhammad Bakhit, had earlier issued a fatwa condemning Bolshevism, a position that Rida, who had studied under Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, did not uphold.

Pan-Islamism sought to unite Muslims from around the world, andto bridge the sectarian divides of Sunni and Shia Islam. When the Turkish-based Ottoman Empire was crushed in March 1924, there was no longer any Islamic center of power in the world. In Saudi Arabia, the Wahhabists of the Al-Saud family took control of Mecca in this decade.

In 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt as a youth group. Though strict and traditionalist, the Saudis welcomed Western oil money. The Muslim Brotherhood soon became political. In the 1950s Sayyid Qutb (right) became the Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, and his books, such as Milestones on the Road
(Ma’alim fi’l-Tariq), still influence modern Islamists.

Qutb had become radicalized while on a trip to America, and opposed both Western values and Egyptian President Nasser’s policies of secular Pan-Arabism. Qutb saw jihad as a global movement, not confined to the Middle East. He was also an anti-Semite. Qutb was hanged in 1966, but he was never a traditional “socialist”, despite the Brotherhood’s later associations with socialists in Egypt, Europe and beyond.

Islamic fundamentalism is essentially driven by adherence to scripture, whereas Islamic socialist countries tend to be superficially secular. Herein lies the paradox- why are Western socialists so enamored with Islamic fundamentalism? In common with extreme socialists, extreme Muslims seek to force the dominance of their beliefs upon societies. At the heart of both ideologies is the idea of implementing a form of “retributive justice”, either redressing the evils of consumerism and capitalism, or redressing the evils of infidel godlessness. Both systems believe that a society should be classless, but only Islamists believe the words of a 7th century “prophet” should dictate all aspects of life.

“Islamic socialism”, a term which came into being in the 1960s, is nothing like Western notions of socialism, particularly those which thrive in Europe. Principally, Islamic socialism has to balance religious principles with socialism, which in essence is secular. In
Pakistan, Islamic “socialism” was exemplified by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). He was president of Pakistan after Bangladesh’s war of secession from Pakistan until 1973, and then Prime Minister until 1977. After years
of military dictatorship and a civil war, Bhutto’s Islamic socialism was popular among many strands of society.

What finally destroyed Bhutto’s “Islamic socialism” were the two things which had blighted Pakistan since independence - Islamism and military dictatorship. General Zia ul-Haq allied himself with the Islamists of the Jamaat-e-Islami, which had had been formed by Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi (1903-1979) in 1941. Maududi, like Qutb, is one of the founding fathers of modern Islamism. Though members of Jamaat-e-Islami still take part in the democratic process, their aim is to abolish democracy and establish a
theocratic society, based upon sharia law.

Zia introduced the notorious Hudood laws in 1979, which meant that rape victims who could not produce four male Muslim witnesses became charged with adultery, and jailed.
In 1986, Zia introduced Islamic blasphemy laws, which blatantly discriminate against members of the Ahmadiyyah sect of Islam. Article 295-C of the Pakistan Penal Code states that anyone who blasphemes against Mohammed can receive the death penalty. In 1990, the Federal Shariat (Islamic) Court ruled that any breach of Article 295-C now merits a mandatory death sentence, with no rights of appeal.

Though his PPP party still exists in Pakistan’s parliamentary system, Ali Bhutto paid the price for trying to unite his country under “Islamic socialism” with its slogan: “Islam is our faith; Democracy is our polity; Socialism is our economy; All power to the people.”
He was hanged on the orders of Zia ul-Haq on April 4,1979.

One thing is certain. Political Islam and democracy can never mix. Those in the West who seek alliances with Islamism do so at their own peril. Politically Muslim countries in the modern world have to strike a compromise with Islamist hardliners. Even “moderate” countries such as Indonesia have a constant battle with Islamists who are never
repressed for fear of revolt, and others such as Malaysia have a system based
entirely on racism. From age 12, all Malays are defined as Muslim, and no Malay is allowed to change their faith, despite a constitution which guarantees religious freedom.

In 1953 in Jerusalem, an Islamist scholar called Taqiuddin al-Nabhani
(1909-1977) instituted Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist political group which now has branches in most Western countries, apart from the Netherlands and Germany, where it is banned. It is banned in Russia, the countries of Central Asia, and all nations in the Middle East. Its aims are to destroy democracies and national boundaries to institute a Caliphate, a
pan-national system of Islamic rule.

Its open contempt for democracy has not stopped leftist
politicians in Western countries from trying to make alliances with
Hizb-ut Tahrir. In March 2006, Clare Short, MP for Birmingham Ladywood invited members of Hizb to the UK Houses of Parliament. This leftist former member of Tony Blair’s cabinet resisted
all calls to cancel the event.

Why do Western leftists want to make common cause with Islamists who wish to destroy their democratic societies and subjugate them under sharia law? In part three, I will detail how far the problem has spread, and examine the rationale of these radicals of the left.

Perhaps, as I began with the words of a philosopher, I should finish here with the words of Robert Redeker (above left), a French philosopher, who wrote:
“The Westerner, the heir to Christianity, is to be the one to make
his soul exposed. He runs the risk of passing himself off as weak.
With the same ardor as Communism, Islam treats generosity,
broadmindedness, tolerance, gentleness, freedom of women and of
manners, democratic values, as signs of decadence. These are the
weaknesses that it seeks to exploit, by means of ‘useful idiots’,
those of good consciences imbued with fine sentiments, in order to
impose the Koranic order on the Western world itself.”

Redeker’s unflinching assessment of Islamism, and the moral poverty of Islam’s founder, caused him to lose his job and his home after receiving Islamist death threats.

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Tomorrow, I’ll post the first part of the series.